The dating pool is wide open these days for singles in their twenties and thirties. There's more choice, more ways to find a partner, and more time to settle down. How can women with seemingly limitless dating options make a partner choice that doesn't feel like settling? Or is settling part of the process? Amalia McGibbon, Lara Vogel and Claire Williams, co-authors of The Choice Effect, explain how an abundance of choices has changed the world of love and dating.

Q: What is the "Choice Effect?"

A: The Choice Effect refers to the impact an overabundance of options has on our love lives. We coined a term to describe those affected: "choister," or people in their twenties and thirties who were born into a world where everything felt possible. Clearly, we're speaking of a fairly privileged section of the global population, but for those of us who grew up with parents, teachers and television saying the "world was our oyster," we now face a situation where we've taken that literally and don't want to settle for anything less. The Choice Effect is what happens when a generation loves choices and hates choosing.




Q: How can too many options make life more - not less - difficult? What are the implications for our love lives?

A: When you feel that you have the wherewithal to "live the life you imagined," it's hard not to feel anxious about the possibility you could fall short. Knowing this generation has been given more opportunities than almost anyone in the past, we feel a strong sense of responsibility and control that can at times be paralyzing. How do you commit to a 30-year career when in the back of your head you're wondering whether you might be even slightly happier in some other professional track? The choister solution is to try them all first, and that can take a while.

The same occurs with your love life; It's hard to settle down when our expectations are so high. We've grown to believe that our partners should be not only funny, smart, kind and handsome -- the things our mothers looked for in a husband -- but also he should appreciate your love of the Oscars, understand that you need him to take paternity leave, and always find you hot even when you've got a cold, a UTI and your favourite Uggs on. And in this age of options, we're both blessed and burdened by the belief that there's always another possibility around the corner. So on one hand that makes it a bit easier to recover from breakups, and on the other hand a bit harder to walk down the aisle.

Q: How does this make love and dating different than it was, say, 50 years ago?

A: Fifty years ago, marriage was something you were meant to do at the beginning of your adult life. That way, you could learn and mature together with your spouse. Nowadays, we believe you'll make for a much better partner -- and play the part in a much happier marriage -- if you arrive at the altar well-formed and already wise about the world. So choisters will want to have already travelled, gone to graduate school and selected a career before partnering, rather than doing all of that with a spouse alongside them.

And this attitude bleeds backwards from marriage into love and dating as well: if you know you want to settle down later in life, and after you've had a bit more life education, then that allows you not only more time to date, but more freedom in who you date as well. They don't all have to be marriage material, if you know you're planning to learn from them.

Q: Do you think we have a generational commitment problem?

A: No. We don't think we have a commitment problem. We think our timelines have shifted. Marriage rates are up, cohabitation rates are up, people are chasing careers and pursuing graduate degrees with more gusto. We commit; we just do it later than anyone has seen before. This has been falsely labelled as commitment issues, a prolonged adolescence, or, most creepily, a Peter Pan complex. The world at large might think we're being irresponsible or impulsive, but in truth there's a long-term strategy behind our 'stalling.'

We figure by taking our time and vetting more options, we're more likely to find the person, the job and the life that will make us happy forever. After all, we don't just want to get married, we want to stay married (a little something we learned from watching 50 per cent of our parents divorce.)

Q: What's your advice to choisters who worry that they'll never really find what they're looking for in a mate?

A: Don't! Statistically, choisters are still getting married; they're doing so at perfectly reasonable ages, and if you want to, you will too. A lot of the anxiety and stress surrounding Mr. Right comes from people's timelines -- it's less "Will I find a great man" and more "Will I find him in time?" People expect that by 30 this is all supposed to be settled or it's over and that's just not true. Of course, we have to recognize that there's no such thing as the perfect job, the perfect partner or the perfect choice.

As we say in our book, "The truth of it is you have to just make a choice in the end -- not knowing if it's right or wrong -- and then make it work for you. There's nothing wrong with having kids at thirty-five, but there is something wrong with being freaked out about it until then. If you're going to travel, don't wring your hands about marriage, and if you're going to get married, don't scroll forlornly through travel blogs." We say enjoy your luck, vet your options and let the occasional anxiety be the most of your problems.